Amid desalination woes, energy minister paints rosy picture of Israel’s water resilience

As the closure of two desalination stations and the limited operations of three others entered a ninth day, Energy Minister Eli Cohen on Monday provided an upbeat review of what authorities were doing to keep potable water flowing.

Cohen told a press conference that the everyday Israeli “hasn’t lacked for water and won’t lack for it in the future,” that Israel has access to almost twice the drinking water it needs for all of the country’s households, and that the water infrastructure is “proving its resilience.”

Six desalination stations provide around 80 percent of Israel’s drinking water.

On August 29, five of them were shut down to protect their sensitive membranes from algal blooms. The taps were temporarily turned off for southern farmers, and local authorities nationwide were told to stop irrigating parks and gardens.

The two stations still shuttered are the southernmost, located in Ashkelon and Ashdod. Three a little further north, at Soreq and Palmachim, are now working partially. The sixth, in Hadera, has operated at full capacity throughout, while authorities have ramped up pumping from groundwater and the Sea of Galilee to keep the water flowing.

Cohen conceded Monday that he had no idea when the algae would disappear. Regarding the efficacy of chemicals sprayed on the algal blooms from the air since Thursday, the Water Authority’s Director, Hezi Lifschitz, told the press conference that professionals were divided.

The use of the chemicals prompted the Health Ministry to call for a temporary ban on fishing in the area, which remains in place.

Cohen said that the Mekorot water company was building new boreholes that would provide as much water as two desalination stations. (According to Water Authority data from earlier this year, four of 10 existing boreholes are not operating because of factors such as pollution).

Cohen explained that officials were looking into additional steps to manage the situation, such as treating seawater before it enters the pipes to desalination stations, extending those pipes further out into the sea to bypass the algae, and buying stocks of replacement membranes.

He said the decision to keep three stations working only partially was made to protect their membranes.

Replacing all membranes across the six stations would cost several tens of millions of shekels, he added. He had no figures for extending the intake pipes.

“The water that Israelis drink, whatever sources it comes from, is healthy, clean, and purified,” he stressed, adding that the only real implication of the algae was that plants’ membranes might wear out more quickly.

He repeated that the algae came from the Nile Delta and said he had no information suggesting that sewage from Gaza was contributing to the marine turbidity.

Gaza’s wastewater treatment systems have been flattened by the war, and sewage flows freely into the Mediterranean, where currents can easily bring it north to threaten Israel’s desalination operations.

Cohen would not be drawn on what should be done to rehabilitate the enclave’s water system, saying this was the responsibility of the Defense Ministry.

He confirmed that Israel was continuing to honor an agreement to supply Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water annually.

Asked whether Israelis — who consume more water per capita than their counterparts in water-rich countries such as Norway — should take any specific precautions, he said only that citizens should be ‘judicious’ in their water use but otherwise behave regularly.

The state’s Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute continues to analyze seawater samples and will send another research boat out on Wednesday for further collection.